It beginning to sound as i might have been ripped off!, is that not possible Kayak, he told me the virus can hide on my line via the exchange?
d (dumbo) :(

Viruses do hide on broadband lines, in the same way as little monsters often hide behind your graphics card :-)

Seriously he may have meant that you got the virus from your internet connection. This is entirely possible since once a machine is infected it will scan for other machines near it on the internet and try to infect them.

Basically in order to keep virus-free you need to:

1. Go through Windows Update and install all of the updates to Windows and Internet Explorer. If in doubt, install everything. Many of the bugs that let viruses in are quickly fixed but if you don't keep your system up to date you won't have the latest fixes.

2. Turn on the notification for new critical updates and install them promptly.

3. Be very very careful when opening emails. Never open an email with an attachment unless you expect it and know the sender. Never ever click OK to the warning box if you are about to be shown an exe, scr, or pif file.

4. Be very very careful when downloading programs from the internet. Steer clear of most of them unless you know them to be safe. Whenever you get a warning box saying something is about to be installed, read the box carefully and think whether it is what you expect, particularly if the web page you came from said to click OK!

5. If you do all of that, you won't actually need firewalls, virus scanners, or adware removers. I have been operating happily for years without any of these, although I now have a firewall because it happens to come with my router. The message here is that all of these programs are over-hyped and won't protect you effectively if you don't get points 1 though 4 right. If you do have virus scanners, be sure to keep them up to date with new virus definitions.

In addition to Kayak's excellent advise, you should consider setting the updates to automatically install. This does require that you leave the computer on at the scheduled time.

well adaware seems to have got rid of it but I now cannot seem to get the standard toolbar up - home back forward etc - any ideas?

on edit - operator error - sorted now.

Hey Dalios, think what you would have saved if you had just asked for some help here, we could have sorted it all out for free. I think there are a few decades worth of IT professionals here, I can only contribute about 27 years worth ;-)

Skinny, you all OK now?

Yes thanks very much Spaceman.

My son in law's speakers are not working.
The light on the right hand speaker is on .

I have had a look at sounds audio devices in the control panel.
The screen is white and is not working the audio device is disabled.

He has XP windows.
In Display managers in sounds there are 5 ? in yellow.
Unable to uninstall.
How can you help

Give me 10k Dailos and I'll tell you where England are going wrong .... on second thoughts I'll do it for free , my pleasure :-)

ARLY BARLEY, first try uninstalling the devices. Normally when there are several connected devices, one is the master device and you need to remove that one in Device Manager: the others will be removed automatically but wouldn't be removed if you tried to do them individually. The master device should have an obvious name like "sound card driver" but won't necessarily be flagged as having a problem. Then reboot and the devices should all be reinstalled. If that fails you will need to reinstall the sound card driver.

I have a problem with the graphics. Recently started using Dow Jones Newswires service. Initially OK, but I now find that it is causing the monitor to "jump" as if a monitor problem. The monitor is fine without this software running.

I have tried adjusting refresh rates and resolutions etc, using 1280x1024@70Hz

I have changed the graphics card to another unit and the problem persists so it would seem not specific to the card.

XP pro, 1024Mb 400DDR, and Barton 2500 processor, Gigabyte motherboard, so I would assume nothing to do with the available memory etc.

Asides from stop using DJ, any thoughts?

2Abbey

This could be a difficult one to track down but I would start by downloading the latest drivers for your graphics card.

I have loaded in the latest drivers from the site. Problems don't seem specific to news service, just that as I add windows to the desktop then it must be putting more load onto the graphics card thereby causing the problem.

Please help: I have a laptop and now have a monitor. I have set it up so that I can drag different applications to show seperatel on the monitor.
But, on the monitor the applications are far too big. I have altered the screen resolution on my lap top but this doesn't do the trick.

How do I make what appears on the monitor smaller?

Thank you.

2Abbey

How much RAM have you got?
How much virtual memory are you using?

Serpico100

What OS are you using?

You should be able to set the resolutions on the laptop and monitor separately.

btw

If anyone is using a second monitor on a laptop that has an NVIDIA based graphics card then it is well worth downloading the latest drivers. They come with a load of tools to manage multi monitor systems.

Virtual memory set at 1534 Mb, apparently this seems to be the max availble. I seem to recall changing this in the distant past

Machine Ram is 1024 Mb

Optimist
Windows XP. BTW: I regret I am almost completely computer illiterate)

Optimist: much to my surprise I have worked it out.

Thanks anyway

2Abbey

You should have enough RAM so that you are actually using almost no VM so I'm running out of ideas. Possibly you could check with the software suppliers to see if it is a common problem.

Serpico100

You beat me to it. I'm glad you are sorted.